Processes that bring about a single worldwide sociocultural system, or the
development of the modern world system, not exhausted by specific trends
in marketing, finance, and politics, are sometimes described with this
term. In sociology of religion, globalization is associated above all with
the work of Roland Robertson (1992), who has offered one of several
contending interpretations of the phenomenon.

Traditionally, social scientists thought of
modernizing change as those things nation-states had to do, the phases
they had to go through, to become modern. More recently, many scholars
have come to see modernization as itself a transnational process. Economic
growth, state formation, the rise of national cultures, changes in the
place of religion around the world—all are processes affected by
relations between societies and in turn create new economic, political,
and cultural relations not contained by societal boundaries. Globalization
, then, refers to those aspects of long-term historical processes that
help to form new patterns of global interaction, new global institutions,
and new ways of thinking about the world as such. How one views the role
and future of religion in the expanding world system depends on how one
accounts for that process generally.

If one thinks of the world system as a
world market linking units differentiated by geography and history, in
which some (core countries) have vastly greater control over economic
resources than others (periphery), religion is bound to appear of little
consequence. Thus, in the work of Immanuel Wallerstein (e.g., 1983),
Christianity may have served as at best one source for the universalism
and rationality that serve as a supporting ideology for the capitalist
world system. Yet because there is no possibility of class solidarity
across the globe, and because this dominant ideology is a powerful tool of
exploitation, religion can become a vehicle for the resistance of
exploited peripheral groups. Religion may inspire antisystemic movements.
Fundamentalist Islam is a case in point.

If one thinks of the world system as
consisting of institutionalized sets of rules (a world polity that steers
local state action), religion may be assigned a more important historical
role. For example, to support his argument that there is a world polity
that specifies what a society must look like and strive for, John Meyer
(1989) looks to classic Christendom as a model of how such a polity can
work. Christianity not only contained values that have been transposed to
the global level, it also linked a particular worldview to a powerful form
of organization. Although some global norms may acquire quasi-sacred
status, the world polity is unlikely to legitimate a public role for
religion in any conventional sense.

If one thinks of the world system as a new
global culture in which different actors debate the nature and direction
of the expanded relations between them, religion becomes crucial in
several respects. As Robertson has argued, the direction of global change
is uncertain; new global relations call into question the identities of
societies and individuals; globalization brings different civilizations
into one public square. Under these circumstances, religious traditions
are powerful sources of new images of world order. At least some groups
will respond to new identity demands by reinterpreting their religious
heritage. In each society, new tensions will emerge between political and
religious institutions. Religious leaders become global actors, engaged in
global debates. All this is not to say that religion somehow determines
the direction of globalization. It is to say that religion, in its many
forms, will help to influence definitions of the global situation.

But how can it do that? A study by Peter
Beyer (1994) addresses the issue. Following Robertson, he distinguishes
between religious movements that defend sociocultural particularism and
those that support change toward a pluralistic world order in which
different traditions coexist. Conservative antisystemic movements, such as
Islamic fundamentalism, react against global trends that threaten old
identities. However, their desired public impact usually remains limited
and localized. Liberal movements, such as some kinds of religious
environmentalism, aim to infuse world culture itself with ultimate
meaning. They may contribute resources for dealing with residual problems
that secular systems cannot address, but they are unlikely to determine
the ways secular institutions actually operate. From Beyer's work, we may
infer that religious actors and beliefs will be more prominent in
discourse about the globe than in the institutions shaping actual global
relations. He holds out the prospect of many contending versions of a
global civil religion but envisions the traditional religions as cultures
that primarily serve individuals.

In the study of religion, globalization has
come to indicate both a set of substantive issues and a change in
perspective. The issues concern the historical role of religious values
and institutions in fostering a new global system, the actual religious
content of current debates about world order, and the future role of
religiously inspired actors as significant players in globalization. Apart
from this emerging agenda, the change in perspective suggests a new way of
thinking about religion. It questions notions of secularization as
something that affects individual societies. It suggests that seemingly
ethnocentric conservatives also are engaged in a global discourse. It
undermines attempts to link religion to a cohesive national culture that
bolsters solidarity. Perhaps most important, it assigns the sociology of
religion the role of interpreting global cultural change.